Munich’s push to Linux complete

Munich's long running switch to open source software has been successfully completed, with the vast majority of the public administration's users now running its own version of Linux. The move is one of the largest open source software deployments in Europe, the city migrated from Windows NT to LiMux, its own Linux distribution.

LiMux incorporates a fully open source desktop infrastructure. The city also decided to use the Open Document Format (ODF) as a standard, instead of proprietary options. It has taken nearly a decade to make the switch but as the project roled out there were more savings announced.

As of November last year, the city saved more than €11.7 million because of the switch. More recent figures were not immediately available, but cost savings were not the only goal of the operation. It was also done to be less dependent on manufacturers, product cycles and proprietary OSes, the council said.

One of the goals was to migrate 12,000 desktops to LiMux, but in the end, the city managed to create over 14,800 LiMux workspaces for its approximately 15,500 desktops.